In the pre-modern Muslim societies, there was a broad consensus about the authority of sharia laws to regulate the horizontal relationships between individuals, including in such areas as personal status, transactions, and inheritance. Underneath that consensus, however, there could be significant differences of opinion, especially about how to put that law into practice. For example, which of the doctrines of the four legal schools (Hanafi, Shafi?i, Maliki and Hanbali) would become the basis of legal procedure, endorsed and sanctioned by the state apparatus? Who would implement sharia rules in the courts? What would be the relationship of the sharia judge with the ruling class? After the Ottoman takeover of Egypt, these questions were all matters of contention. The kanun laws in the form of decrees (ferman) brought about several shifts in the organization of sharia courts and the nature of their relationship with the Ottoman government. An investigation into the context of these laws reveals that the will and ideas of the sultan (or his men) did not singlehandedly determine how sharia courts in Egypt would function. Local groups, including local scholars and common people, participated in the interactions that determined how those courts were to function and contributed to the formation of the laws that regulated sharia courts in Egypt. The end result of these interactions appears to have been a product of the hybridization of the Mamluk and Ottoman priorities. The judicial administration of Egypt was incorporated into the Ottoman scholarly-bureaucratic system by the appointment of a top Hanafi scholar-bureaucrat as the single judge formally above all other judicial personnel. However, in Egypt, in contrast to the Ottoman Balkans and Anatolia, the representatives of all legal schools were appointed as deputies and recognized as of equal status in the judicial process.